Critical Essay by Estelle C. Jelinek

In the following excerpt, Jelinek surveys autobiographical writings by English women of the nineteenth century, concluding with a summary of their contributions to the genre.

The subjective autobiographies of the eighteenth century had little if any influence on the autobiographies by women or men during the nineteenth century. The confessionals of Pilkington, Phillips, and Vane may have contributed to the development of the novel, but they had little effect on later autobiography. (Such was also the case with that rare subjective autobiography by a man, Rousseau's Confessions, 1782.) Even before Victorianism took hold, the impulse to intimate revelation was silent. Women continued to treat personal matters, but at a distance...